Christ Alone in All Things, Even Politics
September 30, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Boldness, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Discernment, Dying to Self, Faith, Godly Character, In the News, Leadership, Maturity Feedback : 27 comments
Believe it or not, this isn’t a political post.
Despite what weather satellites may reveal, the United States, if viewed from space, has never more resembled a massive, angry red wound than it does now. And the salt? Try the Iraq war, terrorism, our status in the world, immigration, or the economic meltdown. For those reasons, people are losing their heads, Christians included, though not quite as thoroughly as in the French Revolution.
Given the election year, the mania is worse than ever. Some are billing Election 2008 as either salvation or damnation for America. Oddly, the Church used to have a term for people who thought that way: the lost.
Still, despite the fact that the One who is to serve as our Lord, Guide, and Model had very little to do with politics, many Christians are looking to politics as the answer for the crises we have made for ourselves.
So in one corner is a former POW who didn’t roll on his country when tortured. In the other corner is a man who says he is full of new ideas. One paints himself as a maverick and the other as the candidate of change.
Critics of Sen. Change note that he’s astonishingly light on any notable political output. They claim the extent of his political will includes his “win at all cost” efforts to champion one political issue more than any other: the right of a woman to have a doctor jam an aspirator into her unborn child’s skull and vacuum out his/her brains.
A little stung by that charge that their man, Sen. Change, fights so hard to kill the unborn, critics of Sen. Maverick come back with claims that while Sen. Maverick doesn’t actively crusade for barbaric deaths for babies, he’s allied with people who are even worse: those who don’t really care all that much about what happens to people after they are born.
Those same pro-Change people like to also note that despite the fact that their man earnestly contends for a policy that leads to the certain death of the most vulnerable in our society, he also represents a vague feeling that may lead to a possible better future for some people at some time—maybe.
This has led some born-again Christians to jump onto Sen. Change’s ship.
Here’s what the Bible says:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days….
—Deuteronomy 30:19-20Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
—2 Corinthians 6:14-18Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price….
—1 Corinthians 6:19-20a
The side of Christ is life and blessing. The side of antichrist is death and cursing.
The side of Christ is light. The side of antichrist is darkness.
The side of Christ is surrender to Him. The side of antichrist is surrender to self-interest.
To choose the side of self-interest, death, and darkness is to choose the side of the barbaric skull-vacuuming and dismemberment of the very least of these, the most helpless of all in our society. It is to choose the side of antichrist.
As Christians, we must never choose the side of antichrist. For this reason, we must never, under any circumstances, ally ourselves with those who represent antichrist. Our love for Christ compels us.
Can a Christian still be a Christian if he or she holds a mistaken position that supports antichrist? I believe so, as long as that Christian actively seeks to repent of that mistaken position and choose Christ in all circumstances.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. We will all answer on Judgment Day. Everything will be revealed. The intentions of every heart will be made known.
Those born-again Christians who think themselves so brave to be endorsing one who supports antichrist positions are really fooling themselves. Theirs is the coward’s way.
And it’s also the coward’s way to vote for the opposing candidate for no other reason than to not vote for his opponent.
The way that honors God in all things, political or not, is to choose Christ’s way at all times.
Jesus Christ said that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If we are in Him, then He will make a way for us because He is the Way. He will show us truth because He is truth.
How does this play out in reality?
Let’s consider the election. Those who live by their own self-interest will vote for those candidates that will give them what they want. Those who live by the Spirit of God will vote for those candidates that best reflect what God alone wants.
Here’s where that becomes true counterculture: The one who is guided by Christ alone will vote for the people who best honor His Kingdom even if that means they vote for candidates 
who are not among the major parties. It means they will vote for the one who honors the Kingdom of God even if that person has no chance of winning the election. Even if that means writing-in the name of a godly person who might only garner one vote, that is what the Christian must do. Because the Christian seeks to reflect light, life, and blessing in all things, even if no one else in the world does.
Therein lies bravery. Therein lies the only real choice for the believer.
And so it must be for all decisions Christians make. We honor Christ and no one else. We choose light and life and blessing in ALL things, not just some. We reject outright anything and anyone set in opposition to Christ in anything.
The road to destruction is wide and many take it. Sadly, many people who consider themselves born again will take it in November and in the days ahead.
Jefty Economics and the Least of These
September 29, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Boldness, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Discernment, Dying to Self, Godly Character, Hospitality, Humility, In the News, Judgmentalism, Leadership, Maturity, Relevance, Simplicity, Work Feedback : 34 comments
{Somewhere in this rant is a worthy post. My apologies to readers in advance that the worthy post didn’t materialize.}
In the course of reading a smattering of Christian blogs wrestling with the economic devastation laying waste to America, I happened across Al Mohler’s take on the subject. By the time I got done reading the last word, it was all I could do not to shake my head in disbelief.
To understand the rest of this post, please read Mohler’s post, “A Christian View of the Economic Crisis.”
Done? Okay…
The first thing that bothers me about Dr. Mohler’s post is that it appears to be caught in a classic, science fiction time warp. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Eisenhower was president.
This is a great problem for much of conservative Evangelicalism. We’re like Jefty in Harlan Ellison’s seminal short story “Jefty Is Five.” In that work, the narrator tells of a neighbor boy who remains five-years old all his life. Jefty’s radio plays dramas from the 40s and 50s that were canceled decades ago. Jefty sends away for secret agent decoder rings offered by cereal companies that no longer exist—and receives them in the mail. In short, Jefty never grows up, nor does the ethereal, dead, dusty world that swirls around him. And he scares the willies out of the normal people who encounter him.
When I read Dr. Mohler’s post, it’s like I’m perusing Jefty’s newspaper, and I can read how the corporations are leading our country to greatness, and every father receives a gold pocket watch (that matches his smoking jacket) after 40 years on the job because he worked hard and climbed the corporate ladder like all hard workers do, and, golly gee willikers, his company put out the best darned widgets at the best darned price, and if you ever had a problem with your widget, they’ll send a repairman in a pressed suit (and a tie, even!) who won’t charge you a dime, and he’ll have your problem solved in fifteen minutes or your money back plus 10 percent for your trouble.
And at night, angels tuck you into bed.
That’s how Jefty economics works.
Jefty economics bases its reality on the old advice that with a little hard work, and the right amount of pluck, any freckle-faced lad can himself embody the classic Horatio Alger story and become a captain of industry.
It sounds so swell.
This, however, is what the Bible says:
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11
Jefty economics can’t account for chance. It doesn’t allow that people may deviate from the climb to the boardroom by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 
It can’t account for the capricious whims of a college admission committee that this year (and this year only) thought that building ashrams in India was a more noble reason for selection than your solution to world hunger, therefore you had to settle for Podunk U. instead of Harvard. It can’t factor in that after you killed yourself for decades to crawl to a middle management position in Kludge Corporation of West Oconomowoc, the CEO’s mistress left him and, in a fit of pique, he sacked your entire department and farmed it out to bean counters in Pakistan. The next thing you know, you’re a greeter at Wal-Mart wondering how the American Dream passed you by.
Who can understand how these things happen? The Jeftys of the world would turn on their radios and give you the answer: “The Shadow knows….”
Welcome to the world of Jefty.
Only problem is, that’s not your reality or mine.
In some ways, I can’t fault Dr. Mohler. Seminary presidents, theologians, and academicians aren’t the best at taking the lifestyle pulse of janitors, taxi cab drivers, and third-shift workers at the old widget factory (who just lost their jobs because the Armani-wearing board of directors moved the work to Shanghai).
See, Jefty economics functions in such a way that the real world, with all its gritty, black ugliness, doesn’t exist. The Jefties of this world can’t see it. The people who are getting killed economically, and have been getting killed for a long time, never happen. They’re simply not there.
Here’s reality: The way we do business, the way we fuel our economy in this country, the way we have been practicing capitalism in the good ol’ U. S. of A. has come home to roost.
I’ve been watching what has been happening to the middle class over the years. It’s not pretty. Hard-working people have been watching their real wealth evaporate. Families I know who were adamant that they were going to maintain the conservative Christian ideal and keep mom at home are not only having to have mom work but are seeing both wage earners’ incomes stagnate to the point that polygamy sounds like the only viable economic option.
And as for the mantra that hard work gets you ahead, it’s time to let that Jefty-ism die. Perhaps at one time it was true, but I know so many people who are killing themselves with hard work and are getting nowhere because they aren’t the right kind of person, didn’t go to the right Ivy League school, didn’t take the Skull & Bones pledge, don’t know the right Masonic handshake, don’t have the right skin color, don’t have the right religious beliefs, and on and on.
I met a person several years ago who shames most of us in hard work. I watched that person get brutalized time and again by the kind of wicked people who populate so much of today’s corporate world. That wonderful person kept a clean nose, gave 210 percent all the time, was the last to turn off the lights at night, and got nowhere. There was always some Maserati driver in a corner office who made sure this person never got out of the cubicle. That constant heel to the neck hurt that person incalculably.
Truth is, I know too many people like that one. They’ve been the canaries in this economy’s coalmine for years. And now the mine’s caved in and gas is seeping into the depths. Is that a striking match I hear?
Here’s the worst part: The kind of people that flame out in the economy aren’t welcome in a lot of conservative Evangelical churches, those gorgeous, multi-million dollar edifices full of Jeftys.
I know because I’ve been in a few Jefty churches. I sat in a men’s Bible study at a prominent Baptist church as a half dozen captains of industry talked about “those people.” Just the other day, a friend told me that the pastor of his old church spotted him in a restaurant and just had to regale him with how wonderfully the new building plan was going and all the millions that he’d raised. Dropped all the monetary figures just to show my friend how stupid he was to leave such a dynamic church. But my friend knew this same church split earlier because a handful of its people had the nerve to evangelize poor Hispanics. You know, dishwashers, gardeners, and garbagemen. Those people. The ones you let into your corner office to dump out your trash can, but God forbid they should aspire to anything higher. Besides, they could never get into the country club—except perhaps as the catering help.
When I hear Dr. Mohler talking the way he does in his piece, I have to wonder if he knows how the sub-economy populated by the least of these lives. If he understands that we really are Two Americas and are becoming more so every day. When he says that people today invest in the same companies that Warren Buffett does, I’ve got ask: “Dr. Mohler, have you priced some of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stock lately? You might be able to buy some at $135,000 a share, but I sure can’t. And have you noticed that the Gateses and Waltons of the world who can plunk down $100,000 without batting an eye get offered a whole new world of higher-paying investments that Joe Sixpack can only dream about?” Then I’d like to introduce the seminary president to hard workers like Edwin Howard Armstrong. And then I’d introduce him to people who don’t have Wikipedia entries, people who broke their backs working and lost their homes anyway. People who don’t have Ivy League networks. You know, people to whom chance just so happened to happen.
Part of me says I’m being unfair, but part of me says I’m not.
Here’s the saddest part of all. The people who are still operating under the economic pretensions of the “I Like Ike” era are the ones who were looking the other way while the morally-challenged, who laughed all the way to the bank at the expense of the rest of us, engineered this fine economy we have now.
Yes, I’m angry.
I’ve been saying for years that the global economic game we’ve been playing is not even zero sum but negative sum. When the Church sat back and welcomed the Industrial Revolution like it was the Second Coming of our Lord Himself, we erected an idol that would eventually taint every part of our lives. I find it ironic to the nth degree that so many conservative Evangelicals are fighting the culture war tooth and nail, failing at the same time to see that the war itself is the natural outcome of what they welcomed 150+ years ago.
Christians cannot turn blind eyes to social and economic justice and NOT reap the whirlwind.
We conservative Christians gave up on reforming business practices. Left that to the liberals. No, a few of us tasted the wealth for a while and it intoxicated us. (”Hey, no fair, Dan! We compensated by starting a workplace Bible study to show we still cared about the souls in our companies. That counts, doesn’t it?”)
Despite what Mohler says, too much of how we lived was based on greed and short-term thinking. As long as our companies posted better figures quarter over quarter, who cared what havoc our practices would wreak down the road? Leave that for some other generation!
Well, that generation is here. And, too bad, we’re it.
Thanks, Jefty.
Grace, No Grace
September 26, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Godly Character, Grace, Humility, In the News, Leadership, Relevance Feedback : 32 comments
If man and woman have sex and that union produces a baby, they’re responsible for their tryst and for the baby.
If a man goes on the down low, picks up HIV, and infects his wife, he’s responsible for his action
If a college student cheats on a test and gets expelled, she’s responsible for her action.
If a guy decides to score some blow on a dimly lit corner and it stops his heart forever, he’s responsible—and dead.
If a bunch of financial institutions decide to cavalierly play a no-win game that 
could ruin the lives of millions of people, they’re not only NOT held responsible, they get the government to bail them out, even if the American people DO NOT WANT the bailout, a bailout that may STILL bring down the American financial system.
Jesus Christ extends grace to those who turn to Him. He paid our penalty, one we could not pay ourselves. As a result, we will not suffer the torment we deserve.
The questions we face daily are ones of grace and no grace.
Should a maniac destroy the life of someone we love, we can offer grace to the perpetrator of the crime, but all the grace in the world will not return the one we lost. Someone pays.
Does the extension of grace to the one who shattered our life mean that he will never see a day of jail, never face the government’s social responsibility to prosecute the crime?
I look at this sordid investment bank meltdown, the lust for a quick, no-fault buck, and the filth shoveled around so that everyone gets dirty. Doesn’t someone at some point have to be responsible?
What does grace look like in this case?
I contacted my government representatives and asked them to reject any bailout. I wonder if the only way for us to understand what God is trying to say to this country is to man up and let the consequences fall.
Meltdown, U.S.A.
September 24, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Discernment, Dying to Self, Godly Character, Holiness, Humility, In the News, Leadership, Maturity, Relevance, Simplicity, Work Feedback : 35 comments
On a recent car trip, my wife and I were telling our son what the world was like when we were his age. One immediate difference between 2008 and 1970 is that people worried about their reputations. Having a bad reputation ruined nearly everything in life and was one of the most difficult things to overcome.
That worry about reputation kept people in line. Even more so, it kept companies in line. To have a bad reputation was certain death to most businesses. And the companies who lived and died most by their reputations? Banks and other financial institutions.
Which pretty much explains why our country is facing the financial meltdown now before us. The people who lead most companies today would sell their reputations in an instant if it meant that such a s sale could boost revenue, even if that boost came with an enormous ultimate cost.
And the financial institutions that uphold our economy did that because they thought they could make a fast buck in a new market: people who weren’t a reputable credit risk.
Some polls say that 85 percent of people in America identify as Christians. George Barna’s polls have routinely pegged the born-again Christian percentage at about 30 percent or so.
Al I have to ask is, where were all the self-professed Christians in the management of all these investment banks and their smaller regional bank cousins? Where were the Christian voices who should have been saying, “You know, reputation and ethics matter more than a quick buck”? I want to know where those Jesus-believing folks were when the decisions were made that led us into this morass.
You say that Christians weren’t in high levels in those investment banks? Wrong.
No, I can’t call them out by name, but past scandals reveal the truth. The Wall Street Journal several years back showed that nearly every major player in the business scandals exemplified by Enron, Worldcom, HealthSouth, and the like were professed born-again Christians.
What is going through such a person’s head when presented with potentially reputation-destroying schemes to make a couple bucks off sub-prime loans? Doesn’t the Holy Spirit shout no? 
Don’t the most basic Scripture passages kick in and warn that person against that course? Doesn’t that person ask, If I consent to this, will it honor my Lord?
I guess if their lord is the almighty dollar, then the answer would have to be yes.
So the hell with reputation. Dismiss what the men who founded the investment bank thought, even though they would’ve fired their entire board of directors if those directors tried to float such lamebrained schemes.
“But sir, we could make a couple bucks right now if we just—”
“Hell no! Not with my name and the name of my father and his father before him on the marquee.”
Cerulean Sanctum turned five-years old this month. From the beginning, readers have read my concerns about economic issues and the Church’s lack of preparation for the looming financial meltdown I believed was coming. And now that meltdown is here, at least the first stages of it. As I’ve said before, “We are not ready.” Better make that “We were not ready.”
The people in high positions in financial sectors who said they were Christians were not ready when God put the test before them.
The people in low positions who maybe should not have bought into self-destructing ARMs were not ready when God put the test before them.
And once again, the people who make up churches across this country, who continued to dance to the happy music and make no preparation for tough days—even though the Bible tells us the tough days are coming (and now God’s test is before us)—were simply not ready.
Isn’t that Jesus’ name we carry? Isn’t it His name on the marquee?
And so much for guarding our reputation as God’s people, people with foresight and wisdom, the ones who can read the signs of the times and prepare for the time when no man can work.
And They Laughed at Him
September 22, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Boldness, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Faith, Godly Character, Leadership, Maturity, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Relevance, Supernaturalism Feedback : 15 comments
It took Jerry 67 minutes exactly to drive the six miles between First Presbyterian Church and home. Sleet varnished roads and houses, the north wind tossed trees and powerlines, and the air filled with tinkling sounds of fracturing ice. Jerry passed three cars in ditches and none on the road save for Charlie’s tow truck. Even it didn’t look too surefooted.
The timing of this elders’ meeting could not have been worse. He should have called it off, but they’d been delaying their decision about the widow Petersen’s fire-damaged house for months now. The poor woman lost everything. Broke his heart to think about it. The husband returns to dust, then a couple weeks later, so does everything he left behind.
They agreed on a bake sale to raise the rest of the funds to repair the home. Afterwards, Jerry slipped a couple Franklins into the pot to keep the other elders’ Jacksons and Hamiltons company. He wrapped them in a Lincoln so no one would feel bad about their own generosity.
Pulling into the drive of his home, Jerry saw Meghan’s face appear from behind the curtained window. Her wide eyes spoke worry, and the tension added a decade to her 39 years. Even the way she let the drapes fall back into place felt anxious to him.
He took a breath and stepped out of the car. Ice crystals poured out of the sky and stung his face with needles of cold, as if to drive home the misery. Meghan flung upon the door and stood there, arms wrapped around herself, trying to keep all the pieces together.
“She’s worse,” she said, and the steam from her breath fell to the ground in the cold.
Jerry took three steps toward the ranch house before stamping his feet at the threshold. “How so,” he replied.
“One-oh-six,” his wife said. “I put her in a cold bath, but it did nothing.”
From across the room, his cousin Cecilia yelled through a cloud of Kool smoke, “What you be doin’ out when your daughter’s sick like that, Jer?” A doughy man next to her adjusted his Case International cap and nodded—T.J., the common-law husband.
Jerry said nothing.
Three people stood in the hall leading to Emma’s room. The one with the hollow face of an Egyptian mummy was his brother-in-law, Clint, who typically said nothing and who chose to stay typical as Jerry pushed past him—only to run into Barbara, all 340 Little Debbie pounds of her.
“What kind of father are you?” she said with tears in her eyes. “You shoulda got her to Bozeman yesterday. Now what?”
Jerry thought to come back with an explanation that neither he nor Meghan thought much of the fever then. Emma came home from school shagged out after cheerleading practice at the middle school. A regular thing. He didn’t have a Magic 8-Ball he consulted in times like these. How could he have known his only child’s fever would leave her teetering between life and death.
The third face in the hall was his neighbor, Sandi, pastor over at the Church of Christ across the street from First Presby. She stood all of five foot nothing and Jerry almost missed her behind Barbara. Sandi said three words no one wanted to hear: “I’m so sorry.”
Dear God, Jerry thought, was his little girl gone?
He sprinted now, only to hold up on entering the room. Ken from one street over, the man who delivered him in this same house 41 years ago, hovered over a small, ashen form that lay still, Meghan’s handmade quilt twisted tightly around her, the fabric stirring only with shallow breaths.
On seeing his daughter that way, Jerry swallowed hard and shut his eyes tight to hold in the tears. The next voice he heard was not Ken’s.
“We can’t get a life flight in here.”
Lars, the town’s sheriff.
“Heaven knows I’ve tried,” the lanky officer continued. “It’s the sleet, you know. Copters can’t fly in it. We might try Charlie, but by truck it would take a day to get to Bozeman in these conditions.”
Jerry stared at the doctor, but Ken just shook his gray head. Then, he felt a small hand on his back. Meghan slid around him and began to sob. “What are we going to do?”
He looked from his wife’s wet face and caught the eyes of the others. Each face held the same question. Each looked to him for an answer.
At this, Jerry scanned the room, let his eyes dwell for a minute on the child he would die for, and made a decision. He backed away and pushed through group, breathing hard, trying to the clear the stench of mildew and ashes from his nose. That smell he’d encountered before at the bedsides of the elderly moments before they pierced the veil. That vile smell, come to rest in his daughter’s bedroom.
“Hon,” Meghan called after him, “where are you going? Stay with me. I need you.”
“There goes the hero,” Cecilia said from her chair, “off to save somebody else. Can’t save his own child for the life of him, though.”
Jerry didn’t look back. He already knew T.J. was nodding in agreement.
Outside, the sleet beat on his face, only it it seemed colder now and filled with venom. And though he swore he’d been inside for less than five minutes, Jerry paused before the car, horrified to see a quarter inch of ice obscuring the windshield.
He’d have to run.
It was a dozen blocks to the house, the one that realtor Barbara sold a few weeks ago. The men who lived there showed up in church one morning and Jerry swore he’d never heard more gossip about a group like that in his life. Everyone at First Presbyterian had an opinion. Jerry knew because he’d heard every one. Nothing good in any of it, either. At home, after the service, he thought he might have to soap out his ears.
But he couldn’t get the man who identified himself as Josh out of his mind. It wasn’t that Josh was all that much to look at. In fact, Jerry swore the man might have come from a Hollywood casting director’s cattle call for “Man #3″ in some imaginary motion picture. Still, that Sunday Jerry couldn’t take his eyes off Josh. It seemed to him that this nondescript, 30-ish stranger knew a wonderful secret, and Jerry could almost see it on his face.
So he ran. He hurled himself through the yards between him and that tired house down by the old Northern line. He stumbled and pulled himself up each time because Emma needed him to do this. Because there was no other answer.
The lights in the place burned low. Jerry prayed that someone would answer. He had no other plan. This had to work.
He took the step leading up the porch wrong and felt his ankle go funny. He bit the side of his mouth and salt leached over his tongue. Grabbing for the railing, he pulled himself up and nearly fell into the door with his knocking.
And that face showed through the hoarfrost on the storm door. The face of the man who was his only hope.
At that moment, a warm wash of tears flow down Jerry’s cheeks and cooled on his chin.
“Listen,” he said through the storm door window, “I know you don’t know me well—”
The door opened wide and Josh stepped aside. “Come in,” he said. “Tell me how I can help.”
With those words, something in Jerry’s chest felt warm, as if something deep in him knew everything was going to work out, that he’d made the right decision. Jerry could almost see his Emma dancing in the school’s ballet program a week from today.
“My girl,” he spat before a different kind of tear flowed, “she’s awfully sick. And I know this is a lot to ask, but could you come and pray for her? I know that if you come and pray for her, she’ll be fine. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”
Jerry hesitated to say anything more for fear that too many words might spoil the plea. He stared down into the man’s eyes, only to see Josh look away.
No, he thought. Would his only hope turn him away?
The smaller man motioned to three others in the room. The quartet gathered their coats. The tallest one, a dark man Jerry thought might be an Arab, said, “We don’t have a car. Did you drive?”
Jerry shook his head.
To this the four others nodded and drew their hoods around them tighter before plunging into the ice outdoors.
While Jerry ran, each foot crunching through the ice-coated grass, the others lagged. How could they, the church elder thought. But then the warmth in his chest flared and he caught himself slowing to draw alongside them.
The five walked ten minutes in silence. For that reason, they heard the sobbing coming from Jerry and Meghan’s place clearly.
That warmth that a moment ago buoyed his hopes turned chill in Jerry’s chest. Now he lagged. Now he was the one who could not keep up.
But he prayed—hard. Big prayers. Prayers that he knew rose up to heaven like incense, like the scent of the pines at Stone Lake Camp where he, Meghan, and Emma spent those wonderful fall days amid the fluorescent yellow of maples and aspen. He could feel the blaze of the hearth, and the thought of it warmed him.
He looked toward the door of his home, heard the crying inside, and sought refuge in the face of a man he barely knew. And that young man’s countenance told of every happy ending in every book Jerry had read at his daughter’s bedtime.
A breath later, the five entered the house.
“Them?” Cecilia said. “These bozos are your answer? Well, way to go, hero, because Emma’s dead.”
But Jerry did not feel the cold in the words. That smell of death and disorder was not in his nose. Even when Meghan buried her face in his chest and wet it with her tears, he only felt the warmth. He looked to Josh, and knew then the warmth came from the stranger who now seemed more like a friend he’d known from forever ago.
The faces of family and neighbors—Jerry could see their anger burn. He could hear their anguish. He walked to his daughter’s room and touched her dead face, then kissed it once. Josh put a hand on the taller man’s shoulder and said to the others, “You all act as if she’s passed on; she’s only sleeping.”
“‘Only sleeping,’ repeated Clint, the silent one. “You idiot, she’s dead! Can’t you tell dead when you see it?”
Jerry could hear Cecilia’s cackle join with her husband’s. Clint chuckled along with them. Even Sandi was smiling. Off to the side, Jerry caught Lars rolling his eyes. Ken scratched his head and went back to filling out an official-looking document.
Then Jerry saw something break on Josh’s face. The man’s eyes narrowed and he shot one finger out of the girl’s room.
“You all need to leave,” he said in a low, flat voice. “All of you, except the mother.” With his other hand, he pulled Meghan toward him and placed her at her husband’s side.”
“Jerry,” Clint said. “Seriously, dude, c’mon.” He stood there with his palms out and a grin on his thin lips.
“Do as the man says,” Jerry said. “Now.”
The sound of muttering. Nasty words that family should never speak, even when alone. But Jerry didn’t care. Not now.
And when the house was empty save for a tired church elder and his wife, and four men huddled around a dead little girl’s bedside, something incredible happened that the town still talks of today. Something most would never think possible. Something found only in the hearts and minds of six people who knew a wonderful secret.
***
It sounds different in a modern setting, doesn’t it? Yet a couple realities still hold true: some laugh and some have faith.
And when [Jesus] had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was.
—Mark 5:39-40
God help us if we claim to have faith but are laughing on the inside. If we look deep into our own hearts, I believe more of us might find ourselves among the scoffers than the faithful. Tragically, there’s only one place for faithless people like that. And those on the outside are never permitted to witness the miracles, never allowed to taint the work of God with their unbelief. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
It’s time to believe, folks, because we’re going to need a lot of miracles soon enough.
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